The Usurer's Grip
About The Usurer's Grip
Clerk Thomas Jenks, his wife, and their sick child are behind on bills when he answers an advertisement for furniture loans at six percent. The lender A. B. Fink, played by Charles Ogle, hands over twenty-five dollars, takes five back for the papers, and has Jenks sign to repay forty-five. The watch, a brooch, and the baby's ring go next, and a woman sent to dun him shouts him down at his desk. He loses the job, the furniture is hauled off, and Fink presses his wife for another kind of payment. A second employer, Robert Emerson, puts the case to the district attorney, who makes Fink return what he took above the legal rate.
Cast & crew
More about The Usurer's Grip
Edison made it with the Russell Sage Foundation's Division of Remedial Loans and the General Film Company released it on 5 October 1912. Bannister Merwin wrote the scenario from a story by Theodora Huntington, with Arthur H. Ham of the Foundation also on the writing, and the National Film Preservation Foundation credits Merwin with the direction, though some catalogs name Charles Brabin.
Themes
Music
Silent.
Notes
- Walter Edwin plays Jenks, Gertrude McCoy his wife, and Edna May Weick their daughter.
- Louise Sydmeth is the woman who duns him at the office. Robert Brower is Emerson.
- The contract on screen is six monthly payments of $7.50.
- Ogle had played the monster in Edison's Frankenstein two years earlier.
- The Moving Picture World synopsis is the source of the pawned ring and the office scene.
Scenes
- Fink counts out twenty-five dollars and snatches five back.
- The bawler-out confronts Jenks at his office desk.
- The district attorney makes Fink return the excess.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-the-usurers-grip)
- National Film Preservation Foundation screening room
Quotes
Do you think I work for my health?
